Book description
It's a sad duty that brings Alafair Tucker to Enid, Oklahoma, in the
fall of 1915. Her sister Ruth Ann's husband, Lester, is not long for
this world, and the family is gathering to send him to his reward.
Alafair's eldest daughter Martha has volunteered to come along and care
for toddler Grace, freeing Alafair to comfort the soon-to-be-bereaved
But where is Kenneth, her niece's irresponsible husband? When it comes
to light that Kenneth has been involved in some shady dealing with Buck
Collins, the most ruthless businessman in town, everyone is convinced
that Collins has done him in. In fact, no other possibility is
considered. But Alafair suspects that things are not so simple, and with
help from Martha, Grace, and her sister's cat, she sets about to
discover the truth about Kenneth's fate. Over the next few days, Alafair
and Martha come face-to-face with blackmail, intimidation, murder, and
family secrets that stretch back over twenty years. And in the process,
they discover things about each other that will change their
relationship forever. When her presence is requested by a family
member, Alafair Tucker goes prepared for death but not for murder. Ruth
Ann Yeager, Alafair's younger sister, is tending to her dying husband,
Lester, and sorely missing her son-in-law, Keneneth Crawford, who is
away on business. So Alafair, farm wife and mother of 10, travels to her
sister's side, taking along her oldest, Martha, 23, and her youngest,
Grace, 2. When Kenneth fails to return, intuitive Alafair learns about
his shady financial dealings and connections with Lester's longtime
enemy, Buck Collins; her dreams and premonitions (and those of young
Grace) turn out to be accurate. When the person who seems to benefit
most from murder is her niece, Olivia, Alafair digs further, ferreting
out the killer and uncovering family secrets. Casey captures the
Oklahoma of 1915-16 in a mystery that's essentially a period cozy (a
deadly oil-well explosion notwithstanding), with recipes of the era
added for spice. Fans will welcome this fourth in an appealing
historical series. Donis Casey was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
A third generation Oklahoman, she and her siblings grew up among their
aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents and great-grandparents on farms
and in small towns, where they learned the love of family and
independent spirit that characterizes the population of that pioneering
state. Donis graduated from the University of Tulsa with a degree in
English, and earned a Master's degree in Library Science from Oklahoma
University. After teaching school for a short time, she enjoyed a career
as an academic librarian, working for many years at the University of
Oklahoma and at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Donis left
academia in 1988 to start a Scottish import gift shop in downtown Tempe.
After more than a decade as an entrepreneur, she decided to devote
herself full-time to writing. The Old Buzzard Had It Coming is her first
book. The Oklahoma Writers' Federation awarded The Old Buzzard first
place in it's annual writing contest as the best unpublished mystery of
2004. For the past twenty years, Donis has lived in Tempe, Arizona, with
her husband.
